if we change it to your favorite colors, no doubt another user will post:
Am i the only one seeing there could be a nicer color combination here
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lets have a vote then? 
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Well, not really a tab hater, after all I do use them in Grasshopper. The important question in my mind is where does the discrepancy between not using the Rhino tabs at all and using the Grasshopper tabs a lot come from?
But we are in a thread about the new icons here and I probably should not have driftet away from this topic. Although I haven’t tried RH9-WIP yet, the new icons look nice to me. The explanation about how you got to the new icons and its colors makes sense to me.
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The link at the end of your post does not open in my browser… 
That link should be fixed now.
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A picture is worth thousand words… The worse contrast of the V9 icons is killing my eyes and forces me to stare at the icons longer and at a shorter distance, further adding to the tiredness.
Not to mention that the new V9 icons are not optimized to work with a slightly darker tab background. They become super difficult to read with any background which is darker than the default light one. The white accents of the V7 icons were genius, made the icons more unique and contributed to the easy readability due to the increased contrast!
Original PNG image:
Rhino 7 UI versus Rhino 9 UI.rar (386.7 KB)
Also, I noticed that some V9 icons look like low-polygonal models due to the very limited range of colours they use (usually 3 shades of light blue). That makes icons like those for “Cylinder”, “Cone” etc look like an octagon (8-sided shape) rather than a true, round cylinder or cone. Doubling the number of shades would fix that at some extent.
The new V9 icon for “Pipe” has a low contrast and look too flat, so bumping the white highlight in the middle of the shape will make it easier to distinguish and look more like a pipe.
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Of course I imagine you’re not pushing this to the community without trying it already.
Still, I think it worth to add the comment. You’re taking the easy way, I’m not complaining it’s reasonable.
Yes but then I’ve to explain student to do this every time they access school computer. On my working setup I can make this huge customization but I can’t when doing courses. You’re a teacher too and you know the IT department.
Very good! This is a big step ahead…but what about trim vs trim mesh and split vs split mesh, split face…
Not talking a out join, merge with almost 4/different flavors… consistency is also making the trim or the join working depending on the selection and not need multiple icons.
I don’t have a clear answer on how to achieve this but it worth to discuss it.
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Yeah, I hear ya… maybe possible to distribute a .rws file that has this already configured?
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I’m not in favor of these suggestions. I think the tabs organize nicely into usable groups and I use them a lot. I put the more commonly-used functions into my custom toolbars, where these are immediately available.
I consider myself a beginner with Rhino and seeing all the various tool options on the toolbar made it significantly easier for me to discover and learn about the various features.
As for color sets, I like the colorful icons a lot, but I’d suggest to keep the current set as an option as well, for people who can’t see color well. (Also account for dark mode, my UI elements are almost all black to reduce the screen brightness for when I work at night.)
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What about themes with other color combinations? Legacy theme would make everyone happy.
Or maybe i should just give up on this and stay with V8 for a decade until the icons change again
I’ve tested it, left my opinions thats all I can do.
I’m done WIP testing It’s Rhino time 
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Thanks for your reply… maybe you’re right . I’ll try next time to show different tab to beginners student, let’s see how it works. Saying this I’m still not a fan of the latest Microsoft apps that uses the same principles of tabs
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well as you know they know that there are people in favour of that criticism. but i am getting the feeling it is not going to change anytime soon. you know how it is when you design something.. 
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Rhino is one of the very few software in which I like tabs - generally I dislike them because they take up extra space and hide functionality. In most other programs I’d prefer having toolbars like Office 2003 used to have, with those same customization options. (Rhino does it better.)
When I read this “colored icon” approach, the first thing I thought of was “well, we’ve come full circle and we’re returning to the Windows XP UI”. 
Maybe I’m wrong but it made me chuckle.
Not for the associates it seems
I give up on this any input falls on deaf ears anyways and after seeing the palette they use clearly there are better options to try it’s just disappointing
V8 for life, the last Rhino version that does not try and destroy my eyes.
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Given that everybody wants to see something different, there may be merit in adding a layer of abstraction. Separate the palette of 36 or whatever different colours from the icons, give people the opportunity to create, copy, edit and delete palettes and provide a mechanism to generate a new icon set for a chosen palette. This doesn’t involve redesigning icons, simply recolouring them. By limiting changes to the colour set, experimentation becomes possible and people can easily have individual icon sets that best serve their eyesight issues or preferences.
Regards
Jeremy
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that colours are even discussed is a testament of poor choice(s) generally. if you design something for a broader audience then keep it as simple as possible. introducing so many colours can only backfire.
in rhino7 for mac there was a good tendency to calm the fireworks by introducing more monochromatic elements. very clear to read and very subtle, not shouting for attention, very good in my opinion. some may say they had too little contrast. ok that can be changed and tweaked
but now we have this mess where colours are shouting at each other and even more so shouting at me, with the elements merging into the content which obscures the differentiation even more, like a brutal amount of toys left scrambled around in a child’s room waiting to be cleaned up again. also the added spacing between the icons here did not help distinguishing them better from each other, but generally gobbles up more real estate for no good use at all.
adding to all this we now have a rainbow dance parade of colours in the tools that it could not be any worse. dont get me wrong i really love colours but color coding always sounds smart, but that is its own kind of dynamite which quickly goes the opposite direction if you start overdoing it or not doing it correct.
if you think it helped organising Rhino better you are on your own. i am not buying it.
intensively attending this forum in total for around 10 years plus i can not ever remember this being discussed, i am not claiming that i read it all of course but if that would have been an intensive often stated wish then i believe that i would have bounced into it at least once in my life time here.
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I disagree. I think The colors help (sure, it could be improved). If it was just monotone you would have people asking for colors. As an example, the new Affinity was released yesterday and there, all icons went monochrome. Guess what, in one video someone complained that it is now harder to quickly distinguish icons (V2 had colored icons).
It’s probably difficult for developers to know when to incorporate user feedback and when not to. This icon color thing to me is clearly a situation where the devs should not let them get distracted any longer. Devs are the ones who need to make the decisions, even if those turn out to be less optimal. They need to make decisions in order to move the project forward. You will always have some users that make it a sport to reject and criticize any change, devs need to get a feeling for when to politely ignore those voices.
There is a lot in Rhino that I’m not happy with but continuing to rant about the icon colors at this point feels a bit like sabotaging the Rhino development, imho.
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Apologies for mentioning it again, but the majority of colour-blind people have a very weak vision to the red-green colour space. They recognize the blue shades much better than the rest colours.
The lime green icons are super disturbing to my eyes to the point that some of them appear yellow, others I see as orange, red or green (depending on the shade). Despite that most of these green icons and the ones of the SubD colour (I see it as a light blue/pink mixture, even though my graphics program says that it’s close to cyan) have 3 or more shades, my eyes only see one shade, maximum two, because I have a limited sensitivity to these colours. To make the things worse, they all have a very low-contrast. That causes an unbearable visual distraction.
Simply make these icons blue again, like in the good old days of Rhino 7. Both, the cyan and lime green icons are an example of a bad UI design, because they don’t bring any advantage while being also much worse than the originals.
Check again my yellow image from a few posts above. Also mentioned in another topic: